13 Oct 2013

Mini Memory Mondays: Going postal with tags

Hi and welcome to the second installment of my mini series - Mini Memory Mondays.As well as sharing ways to use tags and journalling cards in your layouts and mini books I am also gaining inspiration from Julie Kirk's Going Postalseries here.

12 by 12 sheets with a really busy design used to confuse / scare me. Especially ones with writing or a graphic pattern. I always thought that they were too busy to use as backing paper and too big a pattern to mat a photo on. For some reason it never occurred to me to cut them apart and use them as labels and so these mini layouts are trying this layering technique out.

The layout above uses labels cut from a sheet in a 6 by 6 pad; I had fun just building up a photo mat with the small labels and then I stamped on one for the title. I printed onto the card stock, which I don't normally do, as I am taking Jill Sprott's Scrapbooking for the Soul class and saw how she prints a draft copy first to see where it will fit on her layout and so I liked this idea. I also added dimension and texture through brads, washi tape and bakers twine.This photo breaks my heart now as I can see how much he has grown and that, at almost three months, he is not newborn anymore. This sleepsuit is too big for him now, but it was hanging off of him in this picture.Below are two pages that I created for his mini book. I was using up leftover scraps and had these old papers by Crate Paper which seemed to be postal themed - so I thought that it was a great chance to link up with Julie Kirk'sGoing Postalmini series and I also have a layout using Belgian stamps to share later this week.

I kept the colour palette light blue, red and kraft to fit in with the idea of going postal and also used map print paper as this reminds me of airmail and matches the striped design of the card stock - like an airmail envelope.

I am a great advocate of 'snail mail' and used to have several penfriends from all over the world. My favourite penfriend was Jason from Hong Kong as he used to write me letters on really cute stationary like Garfield and Miffy. It may have been writing letters that first caused me to fall in love with stationary and scrapbooking is surely just an extension of this, right?

Such adorable photos - no wonder you're trying to get them all scrapped!

My sister + I used to write to 2 sisters in Northern Ireland [granddaughters of our next-door neighbours] and I clearly remember how important shopping for new stationary was! And, like you, I see a clear link with my continued love of paper!

Thanks so much for joining me Mel - I've popped you on the board now [there are some really nice contributions on there so far, so thank you for adding yours]: http://www.pinterest.com/notesonpaper/going-postal/

Hi Mel ~ Thanks so much for the lovely comment you left for me. I'm happy that you are a new follower too! :o) Your scrapbook pages are adorable!

I had a penpal from Denmark when I was a teenager for a while but we lost touch. My main "penfriend" has always been my grandmother. I wrote letters to her as a little girl, and now that I'm all grown up - and she's 93 - we still write to each other. I always love seeing an envelope with her handwriting in my mail box.

Oh so cute! I love the randomness of the first page, all the little bits and bobs and the tied stripey yarn around the photo...like the little gift he was to you! and the way you've skewed the picture against the stripey airmail style paper on the 2nd LO...and the cute little us heart embellishment on the 3rd! Minna in Finland was probably one of my biggest penpals, I used to love all her moomin stationery! and I guess both Granny's have been pretty permanent penpals in my life too just like Deb! For a while when you were in Reading we were pretty good penpals as well! x